Infinity
by Mindy Duff
Summary: An original piece written after an intensly disturbing dream: Everything always travels in circles but will Melinda break out of hers.


**Infinity**

The car ride had been a long one and she had fallen asleep miles before as she watched the trees through the window. There wasn't the usual music or conversation, just a great wall of foliage blending into one color as she and her husband sped by, so she had let the sound of the engine lull her into a deep sleep.

When they finally reached the city where they lived it was well passed sunset. She never liked the dark and like her neighborhood after dark even less. It wasn't a ghetto or slum, but the city at night always put her on edge. One too many stories of muggings, rapes or murders. It was those very same stories that made her stop watching the news, but just because you don't see the danger from day to day doesn't mean it's not there. As they were turning onto the block they live on, they heard a siren in the distance behind them. She looked to the back at the same time as her husband and saw several cop cars and a swat bus barreling down the street towards them. Her husband, Alan, moved off to the side of the street with the rest of the traffic and allowed the police vehicles to pass. As each one moved along their side, Alan got a curious look on his face and when the final vehicle was several cars ahead, he turned the car back into the street to follow them.

Melinda grabbed the overhead handle of their '97 Honda Accord for fear that they were going to hit something or someone at the speed Alan was maneuvering the vehicle around others. He was definitely speeding but the worse part was the swerving in and out of lanes to pass cars just to keep up with the police. Melinda kept asking him what he was doing and if he thought, it was a good idea to chase cops to an obviously violent scene but he never answered. Finally, he started to slow and pulled up on the opposite side of the street from where the cops parked. They watched as the cops piled out of their cars and took up position outside of a ratty old three-story building where the window boarded up or missing entirely. Each officer, including the swat team had their guns drawn and was taking aim at the building's second story. Melinda started to count how many officers and got to twenty when she heard the Honda's door open and close. She turned to see Alan slipping away towards the scene of inevitable violence. Melinda tried to open the window to yell at him but the switch wouldn't roll the window down even though Alan had left the car running. Before she could reach for the handle, the first shot rang out from the building and the resulting cacophony of response from the police force was deafening. Melinda cowered down in her seat praying to whatever god would listen that she and Alan would survive this.

When the blast of guns stopped, she slowly peaked over the window's edge to see the result of the gunfight. There were cop cars without windows or with flat tires. There were no longer boards in the windows on the right side of the second story of the building. Injure police were being cared for by their comrades and not 6 feet away from the car was Alan; dead from a bullet wound in the face. Melinda started to scream and beat on the window but no one must have been able to hear her because no one came to help. She removed her seatbelt and tried to open her door but the handle wouldn't move. She had been telling Alan for weeks that the door was broken but when he would open the door, it would never stick. She tried several times, pulling and tugging in various directions and ways, hoping that she would find the special movement to unlatch the door. When she was out of breath from trying, she turned to crawl out the driver's side. Sitting in the driver's seat was Alan, covered in blood and gore. A bullet's entrance wound clearly visible and seeping blood down his face. Melinda backed up against the passenger door in terror as Alan turned and lunged for her.

Melinda woke with a start as Alan put the car in park in front of their apartment building. She looked around frantically trying to get her bearings and realized that she had just been dreaming.

"Home sweet home." Alan sighed as he got out of the car.

Their building a three story, grey brick building with old masonry carvings on the eaves and corners. Small and old fashioned were the reasons she and Alan had picked the apartment, well that and it being in the same small city where Alan worked. Melinda always believed in reusing the old and antique until you couldn't any longer and this was exactly why she loved the apartment, especially if you ignore the people who lived in the building.

Melinda stretched the sleep out of her muscles and tried the door handle. For the first time in months, the door opened with no problem. She looked at the door for a moment before shrugging and moving to the trunk where Alan was removing the overnight bags. He strapped the bags to his shoulder, shut the trunk, and went up the steps to the main doors.

Once inside the main hall each step that Alan took showed just how tired he was. Melinda wanted to hug up to him but she new that he was an absolute bear if he was tired and traveling, and she had no interest in fighting with him. They waited for the elevator in silence, listening to each floor bell going off and the whir of the old motor moving the car to their level. The car came to rest and the slightly tarnished copper plated doors opened with a groan. Stepping inside they pressed their floor and with a jerk of the cables, they were on their way up to the second floor.

Melinda held the elevator door open after it opened on their floor so that Alan could maneuver out of the car. They were halfway down the hall when kicked something with her foot. Just as she was about to look for what it was, apartment 2D opened up to reveal Mrs. Carlson. Mrs. Carlson was the old widow of the building and the biggest busy body on the block. The only time she didn't know the comings and goings of tenants was when she was in the hospital with one of her "ailments". Melinda believed that the hospital kept her overnight to makes sure she wasn't losing her mind because Mrs. Carlson was a sweet woman but one sprinkle short of a Christmas cookie.

"Oh Alan, how are you tonight?" Mrs. Carlson said in that saccharine high-pitched grandma voice that everyone new was her actually saying '_what's the dish?'. _God bless Alan if he didn't indulge her just a bit. One thing for Alan, he could charm the hell out of old ladies.

"Evening Mrs. Carlson. I'm doing well. But it was a long and tiring trip." Alan said forcing a half smile onto his face.

"Well, you do look worn dear. Oh by the way did I tell you about the Ferguson's on the third floor?" she excitedly asked, never missing a beat when making her segue. All it took was for Alan to say no and she would go on forever about this tenant and that tenant. As she told Alan the story in a conspirator's whisper, Melinda looked around the floor, trying to locate what she had kicked earlier.

She looked down at her brown shoe and saw something staining the leather. As she looked at the stain, she noticed that the stain started again on the floor in intermittent spots. She followed the path of the stains with her eyes until she was looking down the hall by her and Alan's apartment. In pairs all the way down the hall were severed human heads sitting neatly side by side, facing in all directions. Melinda tilted her head to the side and furrowing her forehead in confusion. Her stomach turned and pitched, threatening to empty there in front of her but she forced herself to take a deep breath and take a step forward. As she got closer, she noticed a young girl of seven or eight, dressed in a yellow sundress, kneeling beside one of the pairs of heads. The girl was dipping her fingers in the blood and drawing figure eights around them, all the while reciting the last half of the Hail Mary. Each time she said the prayer it was in the same singsong voice that children use in playground verses.

"Holy Mary, Mother of God, Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death."

She would say the prayer three times all the while making a figure eight and then move on to the next pair. Melinda watched and was unable to look away until she heard someone say to the left of her.

"Don't worry; she's just having one of her spells."

Melinda turned to see who had spoken, but there was no one there. She looked back down the hall and the girl and heads were gone. Turning back to Mrs. Carlson and Alan, she found Alan finally breaking away from the dowager and moving towards their door. Melinda never felt as happy as to get in her own apartment. Between the dream in the car and the incident in the hallway, she was ready to get into bed, hold on to Alan, and forget the awful images that filled her brain.

* * *

The next morning she opened her eyes to a bright and beautiful day. The images of the previous night although disturbing, were nothing but bad dreams. Melinda rolled over to look at the clock and had a moment of panic thinking that it was eight o'clock Monday morning instead of the Sunday that it was. She turned back to Alan's side of the bead but he was gone. Melinda figured he must have gone for the morning paper at the corner store she pulled back the covers and removed herself from the warmth of her bed to head into the bathroom. When she finished her morning toilet, she retrieved a cup of coffee from the timed coffee pot in the kitchen and came back to the bedroom to unpack the overnight bags at the foot of the bed. She was hanging up one of her dresses that were to be taken to the cleaners when something moved behind her and she caught its movement out of the corner of her eye. She quickly turned to she could see what had caused it but nothing was there. Returning to her task, she looked up into her full-length mirror and saw a girl standing beside the bed. The girl had a small frame and her skin was alabaster white. Dark black hair hung down to her chin with small sections turning out, giving it a slept in look. Melinda turned but there was no one in the room, even though every time she checked the mirror the girl was still there. The girl bent down to the bed, picked up a dress lying there, and smiled when she held it up to her neck, as if to see if it would fit. The girl turned her gaze to Melinda and asked in a sweet whispered voice. "Do I look pretty?" Melinda blinked back the tears forming in her eyes, and spoke without thinking.

"You look very pretty." Melinda gave her a small smile.

The girl smiled again, laid the dress carefully down and walked out of the view of the mirror. Melinda turned to the bed and again found no one in the room. She thought about what had just happened but wasn't afraid of the girl, just of the circumstances and what it could mean. Two waking dreams in such a short time couldn't be a good thing. She was afraid that she would have to tell Alan about the things she was seeing and then he would make her go to the doctor. She hated doctors, hospitals, or anything associated with them. The more she thought about that aspect the more anxious she became until she was sitting on the bed letting what ever tears would come, flow out of her along with any other emotion that show itself, until she eventually cried herself to sleep

When she awoke, it was just getting dark and she could hear Alan in the next room, moving pots and pans, more than likely making dinner. Rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, she went to check on him and found him walking out the door with a box. She tried to catch going to the elevator but he didn't hear her call for him and she refused to go in the hall in a nightgown. She went to the bathroom to wash her face, which felt stiff and swollen from crying, and change into cloths to find out what Alan was doing.

Turning on the cold-water faucet of the bathroom sink, she leaned over and splashed some onto her face, rubbing vigorously until she felt refreshed. She reached for the towel hanging on the wall beside her and patted her face dry. She came to a decision as she held the terry cloth to her eyes. She had decided to tell Alan what she had been experiencing even if it meant going to a doctor. With a sigh, she put the towel down on the counter and in the process knocked a brush on the floor. When she stooped down to pick up the brush she noticed something with a black handle behind the toilet. Reaching around the fixture, she grasped the handle and pulled out an open straight razor. She turned it over in her hand trying to figure out how it got there because it belonged to Alan's father who had passed away years before. The box it was usually stored in was on the top shelf of the bedroom closet. She looked up to yell for Alan and saw red water in the bowl of the toilet. Quickly standing she turned to run out of the room and came face to face with the girl from the hallway, who was still wearing the yellow sundress, but this time sitting beside her was a large black dog. The dog bared its teeth and began to bark as if it was going to attack. Melinda backed up as far as she could until the back of her knees hit the edge of the tub and she fell into it. She opened her mouth to scream but no sound would come out, just a gasping-gulping noise as she tried to force her vocal cords to function. The girl raised her bloodied hand and pointed to the toilet. Melinda forced herself to look in the direction and on the toilet seat lid was a figure eight drawn in blood. She looked back at the girl who was advancing with the dog beside her and a straight razor in the same bloodied hand that she had used to point moments before. Raising her arms to defend herself, Melinda noticed her wrists her cut halfway up her forearms and her night cloths were cover in blood. She opened her mouth to scream but again all she could do was gulp. She continued her silent scream as the girl and dog descended on her and knowing that no one would or could save her.

* * *

The car ride had been a long one and she had fallen asleep miles before as she watched the trees through the window. There wasn't the usual music or conversation, just a great wall of foliage blending into one color as she and her husband sped by, so she had let the sound of the engine lull her into a deep sleep.


End file.
